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Begun, the Statue Wars have
Forgive the truncated tweet. You get the gist of the pith of his marrow.
Got it? Trump is waging a Statue Culture War. The people who topple anything that looks, y’know, old, and hence racist – that’s just, like, an expression of Real Feelings, and hence sanctified. If they tear down a symbol of Wisconsin Progress or an Elk or an actual Abolitionist, well, omelettes, broken eggs and all that.
That’s not war; that’s a way of starting a discussion.
If you don’t accept the premises and the direct action and the verdict of the topplers? You, not them , have decided to declare WAR. Prosecuting the people who tear down monuments is not a reaction to a culture war, it is starting a culture war. Proposing the creation of a national statuary center that celebrates the accomplishments of remarkable American individuals is waging a culture war.
The author of this tweet, according to Wikipedia: “Kenneth Paul Vogel is an American journalist and author who currently reports for The New York Times. From 2007 to 2017, he was the founding chief investigative reporter at Politico.”
Published in General
The Alamo lost. Study the Vietnam War. It is the most basic of military doctrine, pounded into my head in OTS, Squadron Officer’s School, Air Command and Staff College, And Air War College. It is the goal of strategic planning, and even the kid’s game of Risk. Who said it first? Sun Tzu? Maybe. I don’t know. Or is it the collective wisdom from the history of mankind? I don’t know that, either.
“Robert Gates, secretary of defense under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote in his 2014 memoir Duty that Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
This might seem like a tough indictment, but when asked about it, Gates cited some of the huge misjudgments of Biden’s long career. The former defense sec noted that Biden opposed aid to South Vietnam, which led to that country’s collapse.
“He said that when the Shah fell in Iran in 1979 that that was a step forward for progress toward human rights in Iran,” Gates said. “He opposed virtually every element of President Reagan’s defense build-up. He voted against the B-1, the B-2, the MX and so on. He voted against the first Gulf War.”
Gates’ catalog of Biden’s ineptitude is spot-on. Biden supported the “nuclear freeze” movement in the early 80s, which would have given the Soviet Union an edge over the United States at a time when the USSR was trying to bully its way around the world.
Biden opposed the strategic defense initiative, which was essential to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, SDI technology defends people from Poland to Israel, not to mention the U.S.
n 2007, Biden rejected the Bush Administration’s troop “surge” in Iraq. He declared it “a failed policy,” notes the Heritage Foundation’s James Phillips. “He later claimed that Iraq’s improved security, made possible by the surge, was a victory for the Obama Administration.”
As recently as 2011, Biden “advised Obama not to send a military team to kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who organized the September 11 terrorist attacks,” notes journalist Alex Ward. “The mission, with a few hiccups, was successful — and was arguably one of the biggest foreign policy ‘wins,’ at least symbolically, of Obama’s presidency.””
So true. People mocked Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles as Star Wars but Reagan was right. I was on the ground floor of the Air Force’s theater missile defense initiatives begun after the First Gulf War, when Scud attacks proved us mostly defenseless. Afterwards, I was the officer tasked with producing the five page Mission Needs Statement (with classified threat attachment) that became the umbrella document for AF Theater Missile Defense appropriations. I worked with intelligence folks for threat assessment and saw what Congress critters knew when they mocked Reagan and TMD for years afterwards, I worked with space folks to see….. I worked with SDI folks and learned …… It was amazing what we could already do and it was also amazing to me how much the strategic agreement with Russia prevented theater defense initiatives. Bush was right to pull out. Applying Reagan’s vision, we worked out tactics for harnessing existing capabilities and had tested them by 1995. In fact, that vision led to the first use of Predator in an exercise. I was there. Thanks to SDI, we modified equipment that proved successful and was later deployed, after I retired, for the next Iraq war. All this because of one man’s vision, and despite the lack of vision on the Democrat side, a lack that still exists.
A perfect example. Building upon the success of the past, while pretending the past has no influence on the present success.
The arrogance of “I made this…”
Where does this happen? In cities run by Republicans or Democrats?
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@Eherring thank you for your service.
The Vietnamese won by being defensive. I don’t remember them attacking the continental US.
No one has attacked the United States because of our defensive posture.
Malta was never taken by the Germans.
The Cold War was entirely based on defense. I think we definitely won that one, and I don’t recall invading any Soviet Bloc nations.
I think your understanding of what you were taught is facile. The Air War College wants to teach its officers to be aggressive, of course. But this is why military officers should never be the ones deciding whether to go to war, and why doctors should never be allowed to decide when to quarantine a nation. Doctors have one priority: To save every life possible. Military officers have one priority: To win every battle and war.
You learned the wrong lesson in the Air War College. Defense certainly can win a war, and can certainly prevent a war, which is the best way to deal with a war.
No, every time we went on the offensive, we gained the upper hand. Prissypants politicians and the media hated killing and death counts. So, every time we gained the offensive, we quit and settled back into a defensive posture. People think we lost the offensive campaigns when we didn’t. We kept falling back into status quo.
Perhaps we have different definitions of “defense.” Strategically, the North Vietnamese were defensive and they won.
In the Cold War, we were defensive, and we won. Those are two major examples involving our own country probably within your own lifetime.
The cold war went on for decades while we played defense,
Then in the 1980s we went on the offensive in Central America, the Caribbean and Afghanistan, and by pushing back against the USSR with technology (intermediate range missiles and SDI). That’s when we won.
I’m currently reading the Ian Toll trilogy on WWII in the Pacific, and it’s quite clear that going on the offensive is superior to trying to huddle back in defense. That was the whole Japanese plan – take a bunch of territory, secure it, then sue for peace. Didn’t work well.
Even as a tactical matter, it took a while for the US to figure out the correct usage of aircraft carriers and submarines. Once they figured out how to use them offensively, their effectiveness greatly improved.
I don’t remember massing several army divisions in Central America. When did we do that? Hitting someone isn’t always offensive. Every battle and every war will have some elements of attacks and defense. Over all, though, the cold war was entirely defensive. We forced the collapse and disintegration of the USSR without once attacking their country. It’s strange that this conclusion is at all controversial.
I think it is unfair to ascribe a position on any issue to Joe Biden. We don’t know what the opinion polls will indicate a month from now much less after President Biden takes office so we can’t say with certainty what Mr. Biden’s position is or will be at any given time because not even he knows.
His political instincts over the past six weeks have to be basically whisper that he doesn’t think police should be defunded or that statues of Washington, Jefferson or Columbus should be toppled. But they’re more for putting a marker down for the future just in case, they’re not full-throated opposition to the actions, since he only says them ones, and then the media doesn’t ask him again, because they also know Biden’s trying to inoculate himself against a backlash against the woke crowd. They want him to have the marker to use in any debate against Trump or elsewhere, but they don’t want to even make the effort to push him on those issues, because they also know too many markers will enrage the woke SJWs who they need to vote for Joe on Nov. 3.
You confuse political battles and politics with the battles that involve warriors for the purpose of this debate.
I’ve confused nothing. A silly platitude was expressed that was not true. I corrected it.
First, look at that word, “generally.” I recall the original claim was an absolute.
Why do you ignore obvious examples and cling to a misinterpretation of some text book?
I would have expected Biden to come up with something like “Who are you people?”
There’s also a nice jab at Al Sharpton just after the 15 minute mark.
Isn’t “some text book” but the official AF Doctrine that superseded AFM 1-1. I stand by my comments. You can stay in the weeds. I am going back to statues.
I pointed out how you even read your own precious document wrong. You’re very dug in on an untenable point.